The present invention relates to a reconfigurable antenna using addressable pixel elements.
In general, it is possible for an antenna to be made of conductive paths separated from a ground plane by a dielectric space. Such antennas can be built as a patch array with operational frequency, main beam direction and even main beam shape by printing a pattern of the transmission lines, power dividers and patch antennas on a surface above a dielectric.
However, in the past, the method of rapidly reconfiguring these types of antennas has been very restrictive. Typically, a set of radiating elements was connected to a transmission line with amplitude and phase shift elements embedded in the line. An alternative technique has been to use antenna modules with embedded phase and gain characteristics. Both of theses designs suffer from limitations due to the fixed geometry of the array of radiating elements and the configuration of the transmission lines.
Therefore, there is a need for an antenna that can be rapidly reconfigured to change its operational frequency band, its pointing angle, gain, bandwidth and its polarization in less than a millisecond. This patent describes a method for rapid reconfiguration through the use of small conductive segments, or pixel elements, to accomplish these changes.